"You are infuriating!" Sophia cried, when he made yet another jab at her, a result of a long arduous carriage journey with nothing else to do but talk.

His lips curled into a wry grin, "I live to irritate you, my lady, for who else can do so?"

Sophia gave him an unladylike snort. "I know. Do you really have nothing better to do?"

His eyes had roamed over the small interior of their carriage and a slow, seductive smile creeped on his face as regarded the blue eyes narrowed at him. "Do you have any suggestions in such an intimate surrounding?" He purred, causing her to turn a brilliant red.

"You scoundrel," she scowled and slapped his arm, though he knew she was trying her very best not to laugh. The faintest bit of mirth danced in her eyes.

"Your scoundrel," he corrected.

"My scoundrel," she admitted, accepting defeat as he pulled her on his lap and kissed her deeply.

The room was so cold. So very, very cold. And his skin burned like undulated fire, caressing his skin, boiling the insides.

Ice was everywhere. And it was so cold. He needed warmth.

Fire and ice battled against each other.

Blake shouldered on.

Pain. There was so much pain everywhere. And red. The red of blood.

He was swimming in black, in the shadows. Where was the light? Why was it so dark?

Dreams plagued him, memories hounded him, but above it all, there was a blinding agony.

It felt like someone had driven a thousand needles into his side and was twisting them over and over, digging into his flesh. His eyes opened with a start and he gasped loudly.

It took a few minutes for his eyes to get used to the bright, blinding sunlight that streamed through the room and his eyed fluttered against his cheek, trying to get accustomed to light after a period of dark.

Where was he?

The first thing he noticed was the small wooden roof above him, and the pale walls that had cracks here and there. The floor was barren, unlike his own house's floor which were full of thick, handwoven rugs from India. The bed beneath his body felt hard and unyielding, the covers drawn across his lapels and legs, brown and faded.

He wasn't in England or his house, that was for sure. Had he been kidnapped?

No, he couldn't have. There were no restraints around his arms or what he could feel of his legs.

He tried to sit up and immediately his head spun and the world titled on an axis. He tried to roll over tried to get his legs off the bed to the floor, to get his feet under him to run, but he miscalculated and fell onto the floor with a heavy thud.

He let out a loud gasp of pain as it shot through his entire frame. It was unfathomable and all the breath left his lungs in a large gasp. His head throbbed as it had struck the floor sharply, and he clutched it with one arm, the other holding his side that was pulsing beneath his fingertips. His eyes watered up as sheer agony cut his body into pieces.

Slowly, the memories started to flood in.

The gun pointed at his face. Sophia's cries. The gunshot. The bullet entering his flesh. And the pain, so much pain and blood flowing out of him in rivulets. Sophia wailing. And then the silence that stretched over the entire horizon.

"Oh, he's awake!" a course female voice cried and Blake slightly shuffled to get a better look at the speaker. Unfortunately, she was on the other side of the bed and from his vantage point on the floor, he could not see anything.

Footsteps shuffled towards him and he next moment, he was being propped up against the wall, groaning and grunting. A pair of warm brown eyes swam up at him, followed by the sound of a tsk from her lips.

"M'lord. Are ya here, m'lord?" Her Scottish accent was thick and through his throbbing headache, it took a moment for him to understand her words.

"Y...yes."

Slowly the room came into complete focus though a sharp pain still prodded at his left-hand side. He licked his lips, wetting them so he could speak properly, to find they were cracked and split. The woman immediately pressed a flask to his mouth and tilted it.

Cold water streamed over his mouth and he gulped at the water greedily, slurping it like a dying animal.

When he felt he had regained enough strength to speak, he whispered, "Where am I? What happened?"

Another set of footsteps entered the room and a male voice replied, "I am better equipped to reply, m'lord."

Blake looked up to see Reverend Thomas smiling grimly down at him. "T..Tom?"

Tom dropped down on his haunches and regarded the Marquess with genuine relief clouding his eyes. "Lord Alton. It is so nice to finally see you awake. Shall we tell you what has occurred, my lord, or would you like to rest?"

Blake nodded. "Yes, I think you should tell me. Rest can come later."

A few minutes later, Tom, along with a few other men Blake didn't recognize hoisted him back up on the bed. The woman he had met earlier sat by his bedside. After everyone had left, Toms started to pace across the room back and forth, increasing the anxiety pounding through Blake's heart.

Finally, he began, his voice solemn and clenched. "When you were shot, Lady Sophia told me to fetch a doctor. I ran to do so, the fastest I could, though I believe I would be too late by the time I would get back. And I almost was."

"Duncan Campbell, our town doctor much to your disadvantage has left for England to visit some sick family the very day you got shot. Thankfully, wife, Joan Campbell," inclining his head towards the stout, brown-haired woman in the room, was there to help you. "Her husband has taught her only the basics of medicine, but thankfully your bullet wound wasn't deep, and something she has encountered before."

Blake's hand involuntarily flittered to his side where a bandage was stuck on his bare, naked torso. He winced as his fingers pressed it.

"A few other men and I, we dragged your body on a small cot of sorts to The Campbell's cottage. When we picked you up, you were barely breathing? We thought you were dead," Toma gulped, staring at Blake with sorrowful eyes. Blake's heart slightly clenched in response.

"And then you gasped, blood slightly trickling out of you mouth and we knew that we had to help you. We reached here barely in time. The bullet wound was not too deep, but not at the surface either. Thankfully, some of your clothing stopped the bullet's speed, or else it would have punctured your stomach. It missed it, barely by a few fingerbreadths."

Blake's throat clogged up. He had almost died. He had almost died.

"Mrs. Campbell took the bullet out, but without appropriate anesthetic, which she had run out the day before, you screamed and thrashed. You fell, completely unconscious my lord. For several days, despite the bullet being removed, you continued to bleed. We didn't know what to do. We had to wait. Wait and watch to see what would happen."

"We...?" Blake croaked out, his voice cracking with shock.

"Everyone in Gretna Green heard what happened to you, my lord. The Scottish witnesses to your marriage spread the word. It became confirmed when the men who shot you told everyone to keep hush about it. They believed you were dead and didn't want the authorities to know how. But we knew you were alive and we intended to keep you that way. They didn't have to find out."

Blake growled under his breath. "Those bastards..."

"Yes." Tom's jaw tightened. "The authorities don't know about what took place in that church. The men who shot you cruelly believe we are doing it out of fear, but we do it out of humanity. They deserve justice and you can only deliver it. Gretna is not a town tainted with murder, but it has now. You must right it."

Blake nodded. "Thank you. I shall."

Tom nodded sharply. "You were in and out of consciousness for one and a half weeks, my lord. You had fitful nights and for a few days you were delirious with fever because the wound had become slightly infected. We all prayed for a miracle."

"Mrs. Campbell treated you with every medicine they had and even then your life was hanging by a very thin thread, my lord."

Death has caressed his skin, run rampant in his veins.

"Your mother, my lord, came to search for you as well."

Blake stiffened and his eyes shot up. "What... what did you tell her?"

"Nothing. We couldn't risk more people knowing that you were alive.

"My mother thinks I am dead?"
"Ye, she thinks you are dead and buried."
Blake couldn't keep the ice from his voice. "But she is my mother!"

"We couldn't be sure."

"How... how about Lady Sophia?"

"The men who shot you too her away. She hasn't been here since."

Blake nodded slowly. Her father must have kept her from even visiting his "body". Or so he hoped. Hopefully, nothing even worse had befallen her.

He turned towards the lady sitting beside him. "Thank you. I owe you my life and that is a debt that can never be paid. But name your price for some of it. I will deliver it."

Those wide brown eyes peered at him openly. "No need for ye thanks, m'lord. I was doing my duty."

"You save my life. Please, tell me what you want."

But Mrs. Campbell firmly shook her head. "All I want m'lord, if for you to recover and teach those cruel men a lesson. Gretna has never seen such horror and it is a crim against us. Tom has told me a great many things about you. It is a crim against you, m'lord."

Blake nodded sharply. "If that is what you wish." Blake slightly pushed himself off the bed but was firmly pressed back again by Mrs. Campbell.

"M'lord. You need rest now. You need'ta regain ye strength."

It was true. Just that small movement had caused ripples of agony to shudder through Blake's body. "Thank you." Both Tom and Mrs Campbells nodded and quietly padded from the room.

It wasn't long before sleep overcame him.

The next two weeks, Blake spent every waking moment trying to build up his strength to face Sophia's father and his associates. Being unconscious had reduced him to neatly a bag of bones. Several villagers, over the span of his recovery had brought bowls of soup to aid him, but in his state of unconsciousness, he had barely eaten. Rather, no one had been able to feed him through his delirium. His ribs slightly protruded and though his arms were still muscles, the flesh around his wrist had thinned and the sharp v of his hip bones stuck out starkly.

For a few days since he had woken up, Blake could barely walk from one end of the room to the other. His abdomen was sore and painful to touch and he felt like retching as soon as he did. His vision would swim and his head would throb. He had to use walking stick to get from place to place.

He was an old man in a young man's body then.

He hated how weak he was. Rage consumed his entire being and one day he even broke a chair as anger pounded through him. Anger hat he had been reduced to thus. Anger this had happened to him.

But mostly anger at what his supposed death was doing to Sophia and that he couldn't even tell her he was alive.

When his feet finally became steady under him, he helped the villagers with menial chores. They begged him not to, that his status did not called for such diminutive things, but work drive the anger for his mind. Slugging pails of muck, helping in the fields. They helped him regain his strength.

Helped him not think about Sophia and her breaking heart. And his own mirroring hers.

Nearly three and a half weeks after he had been shot, Mrs. Campbell finally allowed him to remove the bandage, after noble begging by his truly. Blake grimaced at the sight it beheld, a small puckered scar that was surrounded by several stitches. It looked like a battlefield.

Blake decided to keep the bandage up after that. Mrs. Campbell couldn't hold in her laughter when he told her and he couldn't help himself from turning beetroot red.

By the end of the fifth week from the day he had nearly died, Blake's strength returned to what it once was. Or nearly to it. Rest and good food had fleshed out the sharp angles of his face and body. The only remnant of his experience was a scar and hollowed eyes that spoke of nightmares that plagued him.

His body had responded well to sleep, slowly recovering, but every night, his mind was plagued by visions of blood and death. Sophia often appeared to him in them, her pure angelic face covered with blood, her pure white dress stained with it. He woke up in cold sweat every day. The dark shadows under his eyes were pools of black.

He looked like a man who came from war, his eyes haunted by the things he had seen. It didn't hep that his beard had grown monstrously scruffier. Blake debated on shaving it off, but something held him back. He wanted his killers to see him like this. Waxed and waned by death.

After one and half months since he had been shot, Blake finally say upon a addled horse, the brown gelding strong and powerful beneath him.

The townspeople of Gretna all looked up at him, had gathered to see him off. He could spy Mrs. Duncan, who he had helped to fix her thatched roof, the little brown-haired boy called George who had given him amusement by playing chess when Blake was bed ridden, Mr. Cromwell the ironsmith who had made his cane. Blake would miss them and all they had done for them.

Right before he was to leave, Tom pressed something cold and metallic in to his hand. Blake looked down to see a wicked gun clutched between bony fingers. Blake shuddered, the echoes of a gunshot still whispering through his mind and tried to give it back to Tom but he adamantly shook his head.

"Whatever you decide to do to him, whether you are going to kill him or take him in custody, you need some weapon, my lord." Tom's voice had slightly halted at the word 'kill'. Blake didn't blame him. Murder wasn't supposed to easy to say or do. Blake still didn't know what he was going to do beyond the confrontation.

"You take care of yourself, my lord" Tom cried, and Blake shook his hand.

"Thank you, Tom, for all the effort you have put in. "Then he raised his eyes to regard the townspeople. "And thank you all for shielding me from those horrible men, hiding the truth from the law to help me. It still baffled me that you would do so, as the law can give you justice, but you chose to put your faith in me instead."

The gelding awkwardly snorted beneath him, ready to gallop. "Thank you all."
All the people shook their heads, smiles on their faces.

Blake then kicked his legs slightly and the horse started into a trot, as he headed towards the biggest confrontation of them all.

A/N: Yay, so Blake actually lives. Come on guys, do you think I can possibly kill that piece of male hunk that has a heart of gold?

Guys, please do vote and comment if you like the chapters. I appreciate all of you, even my silent readers but unless I see you on my feed, I can't thank you <3. Your votes and your comments truly mean so much to me!

And guys, comment here who you would cast for Blake and Sophia! I would really like to know your thoughts <3

Also, shout out to Shellz2308 for guessing the theory about Blake correctly!

Readers! Thank you for taking your time to read this chapter! Be sure to vote, comment and share it with others! Every single thing means the world to me! I love you all!